SourceTree Branching and Merging Overview

SourceTree Branching and Merging Overview

Branch Vs Checkout in Git Checkout in SourceTree (switch branches) Creating a new Branch in SourceTree Checkout (Create new Branch) Merging Branches Rebase in SourceTree Fetch in SourceTree Pull in SourceTree

Checkout in SourceTree (switch branches)

In the previous post Creating a new Branch in SourceTree we created a new branch “GitCommands”, we now have 2 branches “master” and “GitCommands” and the [Head] is pointing to the “GitCommands” branch, we will switch from this branch to the “master” branch.

1.    Open source Tree.

2.    Before switching the branch, check the branch to with the [head] is pointing, now we are in the GitCommands branch.

3.    Click on the Checkout option from the Toolbar.

4.    In the pop-up, select the master branch and click OK.

5.    The [head] now points to the [master] branch, the files in the local working folder are updated to reflect the files in the [master] branch.

Notice that the file “Git Commands.docs” added to the “Git Commands” is not available in the local Working Folder, this is because when you switch to a different branch, the local working folder is refreshed with the files in that branch.

6.    Only one copy of the working folder is maintained, and the files in the working folder reflects the files in the branch to which the head is pointing, hence before switching from one branch to another make sure that the changes are properly committed.

7.  You can also Checkout to an existing branch by right clicking on the branch and selecting the “checkout” option.

Creating a new Branch in SourceTree

Branching is an important feature of any version control system. Branching concept in Git is quite different from the conventional version control systems. In conventional version control systems’ branching involves creating a physical set of files/documents and storing them as a separate copy for that branch.

In Git branching is done in a different logic, Git basically stores all the changes to the repository in the form of commits, and branching is done just by switching the [head] pointer between the commits.

Let us now create a new branch called GitCommands and add a new file Git Commands.docx to the new branch.

Branch Vs Checkout in Git

Branch and Checkout do the same thing but there is a small difference between the two. This post explains the difference between the operation of the branch and checkout commands in Git.

List out all the branches in the current repository

In the previous post we saw on how to switch to a specific branch using the checkout command, at times we might have more branches in a repository which we cannot remember always, the $git branch command is used to list out all the branches in the current repository.

The following command lists all the branches in the repository.

Checkout a branch using Git Bash

The checkout command is used to switch to a specific branch, also the checkout command gets the latest changes from the specified branch and updates them to the local working folder. Before using the checkout command to switch to a branch, the specific branch should be created using the git branch command.  

The checkout command can be used with the –b switch to create a new branch and switch to that branch in a single command.